Horowitz Misses the Point (Again)

By Michael Russell | Friday, April 7, 2006

BOOK REVIEW

The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America
David Horowitz
Regnery, 2006

To call David Horowitz’s The Professors a polemic would be at best disingenuous, for at no point in his work does Horowitz present an actual argument. With the exception of his all-too-brief introduction and conclusion (which happen to be simple rehashings of the same old cry of too many crazy liberals in academia) that seemingly exist only for context, there is no thesis. Though there certainly is proof that there are wackos in academia, it is a claim which Horowitz is not the first to present, and he fails to provide any new insight. In short, it is a list of academic critiques that seems more appropriate for a website than for the shelves of Barnes & Noble.

However, no list could be built on such ambiguous grounds as “dangerous academics” so Horowitz selects criteria that allow him to separate the truly “dangerous” from the “risky” or just “chancy” academics. The criteria, or as he calls them, “trends,” are self-promotion, political propaganda or agendas, and anti-Semitic remarks. Nearly as vague as “dangerous,” these criteria provide an effective ploy that allows him to comment on Middle Eastern Studies programs under the pretense of academic criticism. Clearly, a product of its times, the vast majority of the academics fall into one of three categories: Professors of Gender or Ethnic Studies, Professors critical of a “American Empire”, and Professors of Middle Eastern Studies. No surprises there.

Though Horowitz openly admits that his book is dedicated to uncovering dangerous leftist, liberal, Marxists, he also uses it as an excuse to push an agenda that is based on around character attacks and clever lies, typical of his work. For example, one of the infamous 101 is Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, decidedly a pro-Palestinian liberal, who is a well-known dissenter from the Bush Administration’s Middle Eastern policy. Despite his clear liberal bias, Cole is a leading American scholar on Iraq, and Horowitz denounces him in with little evidence for his “dangerous” beliefs beyond Cole’s assertion that neoconservatives are setting the agenda at the Pentagon: an observation hardly outside the mainstream.

Horowitz attacks Professor Noam Chomsky of M.I.T. on several grounds and rightfully so, but the vocabulary he uses to attack Chomsky does not fit with the problems that Chomsky creates. Chomsky’s main qualms are with elitism and American empire, and he bases these attacks in Marxist ideology, but Horowitz refers to the “Great Satan” of America when talking of Chomsky, a claim the atheist has yet to make. This “Great Satan” is again an allusion to Islam, which is a clear undercurrent to the entire work, as it seems all of the Professors have some remark about September 11th that is best summed up as “we had it coming.” Unfortunately this trend does not build a sense of fear or conspiracy, but instead a feeling that the same horse can only be beaten so many times. This isn’t meant to excuse those professors that make these remarks, but rather a hope that there would be a little variety among the most “dangerous academics.”

Of course, Horowitz’s sloppy political punditry under the guise of a campaign for academic freedom are annoying, but a worse problem is the methods he employs. A regrettable trend in political literature recently has been to use questionable source material, but bury the citation in the bibliography, where few bother to look. A cursory examination of Horowitz’s sources revealed a few sites with questionable veracity. I found it hard to decide whether the use of ratemyprofessors.com was either humorous or disturbing; I suppose it depends on your level of cynicism. The views of temperamental college kids and their anonymous commentary on professors cannot be considered reliable source material. Then again, the source used most often by Horowitz was none other than himself, taken from his blog, opinion pieces, and other books. Not that there is something wrong with that, per se, but it reinforces the impression that the subject matter has become tired and that he is only rehashing his same horror stories. One begins to feel that he’s reading some cross between an anthology of Horowitz’s collected works and an encyclopedia of the professors he’s commented on.

Yet, the problem in academia, when seen from outside Horowitz’s self-aggrandizing crusade, is not the few fringe terrorist turned professors, but rather the widespread homogeneity of opinion that is decidedly left-leaning. While the United States as a whole has become increasingly conservative in the last quarter century, the academy has managed to continue along a liberal path that, as these 101 professors show, is increasingly out of touch with Americans. Horowitz’s problem, again, comes from his approach; he never stops to think that 36 moderately liberal professors could push opinion better than one bombastic professor who radicalizes opinion. Constant exposure to these well-meaning liberals is the basis of the “indoctrination” debate, and radical conservatives on a faculty might not provide “intellectual diversity” so much as provoke resentment.

The Professors’ most damning flaw is that after having read it one has neither a clearer understanding of American academia, nor an idea of larger problems outside of the 101 anecdotes. One interesting statistic is left with the reader, however: Horowitz’s claim that there are upwards of 60,000 professors teaching in America who he would classify as “dangerous,” whereas 40,000 PhDs are conferred in the United States annually.

Distractions such as The Professors emphasize only extreme cases, without addressing the underlying issues at play in the universities. While oscillating between entertaining and terrifying, Horowitz never takes his subject beyond “look at the crazies!” Even though many clearly are on the fringe of society, each presents a problem particular to an institution (even Dartmouth has a couple) but without indication of a wider and deeper problem. Maybe Horowitz is right when he says that his work is something to build around, but an intellectual foundation requires thought, which, this volume is sadly lacking.

Horowitz Misses the Point (Again)

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